Last Tuesday, I introduced keywords and suggested their main purpose is to tell first-time visitors what your site is about.
The chances are the name of your organisation won’t tell your visitor much about what your site offers. Even if it does, people are unlikely to search for it because they might not have heard about it.
It may be gratifying to type your organisation’s name into a search engine and find your website ranking high on the results page. But realistically, how many people are likely to do that?
You need to find alternative words or phrases, people might search for and through them find you. This is a massive topic, called search engine optimisation (seo).
Let’s imagine a company, “Amphibiana Plus” wants to rank for “plague of frogs”. First, they need to put good relevant content on their site. In time people will find it (seo is about how to promote this) and they might add a link from their site to yours. As more organisations recommend your site in this way, your site will climb in the search engines rankings.
Note good content is the key. Google, the world’s main search engine, is changing the way its search engine works to encourage good content. Only good content will rank high on the search engine results page. So, it is really important to understand how keywords relate to good content.
So, how do you find keywords (or phrases!)? Here are few pointers:
- Review your current website content and printed literature and note any recurring themes or issues. They might be in your mission statement, for example.
- Brainstorm around these themes and get as many ideas as possible. You will need to consider each idea and ask realistically whether it is something people might enter a search engine.
- Choose a good keyword and enter it into Google. Type slowly and watch the suggestions Google supplies. At some point they will become relevant and you’ll get some idea what other people are already entering. Remember if there are lots of relevant options, it’s a good thing because it shows there is interest in that theme.
- If you want to explore more ideas, try using Google Adwords. Google offers a number of useful tools under this heading. They are free to use and you are under no obligation to purchase advertising. (If you are just starting I would council against using paid ads until your organisation is well established online.) Anyway, register if it is your first time and then click on the Tools menu and you’ll find the keywords tool in the menu.
So, that’s how to get started. Next time I’ll show you what to do with them once you’ve found them. Do you have any tips about finding keywords?
